My Book List

(These days, everyone seems to start with “So,” so here goes.)

So, people are nominating each other furiously to publish their ten most favorite books.  The phrasing seems to be different in each case; sometimes it is the ten books that stayed with them the most; sometimes it is the ten books to which they return most often, othertimes it’s something else.  Perhaps for some people, picking ten books out of all those you’ve read is easy.  But that’s like picking ten of your favorite people.  Like picking ten people to thank if you win the Academy Awards.  It’s silly; you just can’t do it!  I certainly couldn’t.

I read like a fury until the age of, oh, forty, I’d say.  Then I started writing, and began to read my own stuff—writing, I mean— which sounds silly, but, well, that’s what I do.

Some of the books I’ve read, I’d much rather nobody knew about.  Other books I’ve read won’t mean much to anyone unless they’re in my field, or share my interests.  Yet other books I’ve read just don’t bear reading today, simply because we don’t talk like that anymore, and the stuff is obnoxious.  I just picked up one of them the other day, and some passages were appalling, for how badly they were written, or how ignorant the author comes across as being.  Let’s face it: I read a lot of crap.

It’s that fact, more than anything, that makes me determined to join the hordes of those who want to air their dirty reading laundry.  But I have to editorialize and comment on many of the books.

G. A. Henty: The Cat of Bubastes

This has to stand for about seven books by Henty that I read, including the gruesome “With Cortez in Mexico,” which began my political awakening.

Arthur Conan-Doyle: A Study in Scarlet

There’s not much to say about this, but it stands for nearly fifteen books I read as a teenager, after my Dad laid a Sherlock Holmes treasury on me.  Great style.

Leslie Charteris: The Lady or the Tiger

See what I mean?  Again, this one must stand for a ton of Saint books I read.

Louisa May Alcott: Little Men

(I read “Little Women” too, but off the record.)  I loved this book, and my writing was influenced greatly by Ms. Alcott’s style, which, I know, tends to the sentimental.

Edgar Rice Burroughs: Son of Tarzan

One of the most romantic books, especially for a sixteen-year-old, who doesn’t know much about anything.

Gertrude Norman: Letters of Composers

This is an anthology, and is probably one of the books that influenced me most.

C. P. Snow: Variety of Men

It would have been more impressive if I had said Two Cultures, but I started that one when I was, like, seventeen, and quickly put it down, and read this one instead.

Herbert Goldstein: Classical Mechanics

I wasn’t sure whether textbooks were allowed on this list, but I see a few in other people’s lists, so why not?  This is a brilliant book, and I love this gentleman dearly (through his books.  I have never met him).

Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Long Winter

I read these a lot later in life than most people, but I only learned of them when I was an adult.  Describes the Pioneer experience to the rest of us.

Laura Adams: Seeds of Fire

Laura Adams is a pseudonym of Karin Kallmaker.

Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey: Lucy, The beginnings of Humankind

I can’t believe people have forgotten all about this book.

Terry Pratchett: Wyrd Sisters

You’ll never know what humor can be unless you give this one a try.

I think I’ve gone a couple over.  I’ve also left out a ton of books by Marion Zimmer Bradley, starting with Darkover, and ending with Avalon, and the tragically neglected Firebrand.  I have also read almost everything Anne McCaffrey has written, as well as Arthur C. Clarke, James P. Hogan, and numerous science fiction writers.  And I’ve left out the crazy books by Douglas Adams: the Hitchhiker set and Dirk Gently, as well as books by Agatha Christie, J. R. R. Tolkien, and David Eddings, especially the Belgariad series of the latter.  I’ve also left out the lovely novels by Jessica Duchen: Rites of Spring, and Muriel Barbary: The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  But I’m more concerned with conveying the variety of books I have read, than in listing the ones most folks are likely to recognize.

Oops, forgot Harry Potter!  Also forgot Susan Haley's Buffalo Jump, and Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows, which Susan brought to my attention.  This is going to be bad; I'm going to be screwing around with this list every time I remember another book.

Guess what: I also forgot ... wait ... I've forgotten.

[Added later:
If any of you are Anne of Green Gables fans, yes, I have read the books, and I love them :)  I first read them just a few years ago, at an age when I was a lot more difficult to bowl over!

Piers Anthony wrote a number of series, and I have read several of them.  Unfortunately, they're not easy to get into.

I have read the Hardy Boys books, and I must say that I agree with my wife that they (the Hardy boys) were fatheads.  Nancy Drew was a lot more likeable.

Few of you could possibly remember a series about a village priest in Italy, and the communist mayor of the town: Don Camillo, and Peppone.  These characters were created by Giovanni Guareschi, and serialized in a magazine, and published only posthumously as novels.

A couple of books by Morris West got read by me, as did a number of James Bond books, a couple of books by Alistair McLean (Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare), but I prefer books without too much mayhem in them.  Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code comes close to my tolerance level.

A book that impressed me deeply was Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible, well worth reading by anyone who wants to demythologize their understanding of so-called Biblical times.

The Physics and Chemistry of Life, an anthology by Scientific American, which the famous journal kept hidden from my eyes for more than 20 years, is an amazing tour of the mechanics of the life processes.  Anyone with a little basic chemistry can understand it.  It is now available online from Cengage.

Feynman, Leighton and Sands's The Feynman Lectures on Physics was actually an enjoyable read, and taught me a lot of mathematics.  Feynman had the same power to explain as Leonard Bernstein, using beautiful, conversational language.  (It was actually a transcript of spoken lectures.)

I loved reading my daughter's copies of Tamora Pierce's stories, especially the Alanna books, and the Keladry books!

A.